Anyone wishing to give Eric "The Crafty Cockney" Bristow a run for his money at the oche has been offered a mathematical helping hand by a crack team from Aberdeen University, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WCDS), "the global voice for the protection of whales, dolphins and their environment", has launched a "life size blue whale interactive banner", which can be seen here.

Nokia is on the verge of buying Palm, with an announcement said to be due tomorrow, the day the PDA pioneer is due to report its latest quarterly financial results. Or maybe the buyer's Motorola. Or venture capitalist Texas Pacific Group. Or maybe Silver Lake Partners.

Metal phones are all the rage - at least in South Korea, where local handset maker Samsung this week introduced a freash pair of alloy-clad phones into its Magic family. Joining the Magic Silver: Magic Gold and Magic... er... Brown.

Italian gamers have got their hands on Sony's PlayStation 3 two days before anyone else in Europe as local retailers flipped the finger at the consumer electronics giant's launch target of first thing this coming Friday.

The Long Tail theory posits that the infinite shelf space made possible by the internet enhances the market value for "niche products". In the case of the music, that means indie artists. Unfortunately, the real benefit of the Long Tail flows to the distributor, not the artist.

LG has admitted its code caused some of its LCD and plasma TVs to freeze during certain digital broadcasts transmitted by Australia's Nine Network. The South Korean giant apologised for any inconvenience caused and pledged to fix the troubled tellies.

Pay details of scores of workers of Perth and Kinross Council has been found on a memory stick left in the street. The security lapse could have exposed workers to ID theft, the Perth Advertiserreports.

Depressing evidence that the US news big deals have jumped the rails flows daily in the war on terror. Take 60 Minutes' recent special on "jihad.com." Reported by Scott Pelley and produced by Harry Radcliffe, the 800lb gorilla of US journalism led with the tired story of al Qaeda in cyberspace.

Yesterday, Westminster eForum staged the first debate in the UK on "Net Neutrality" - chaired by former DTI minister Alun Michael and Shadow DTI Charles Hendry. El Reg gave a brief presentation. Here it is, with selected highlights, and a collection of external links for further reading.

Apple has at last confirmed what pre-order customers already knew: its Apple TV set-top box is flying out of the warehouse doors straight to buyers. It'll arrive in Apple's offline stores in the US this week, it said.

The majority of companies who should have signed up to WEEE directive schemes last week have failed to do so. But that's all right because the Environment Agency is not taking enforcement action even though the deadline has passed.

The US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) has launched a stinging attack on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing services, publishing a report (pdf) from its Office of International Relations earlier this month.

Online gambling giant Sportingbook announced today in a statement that the State of Louisiana had canceled all outstanding arrest warrants issued against current or former employees, including ex-CEO Peter Dicks.

For the French, the business of exploiting available laws, directives and other rules is an art form. One such inventive use of the constraints is the 'greve du zele' ('working to rules' strike action) where those on strike work more, not less.

In more good news for the online gambling industry, Neteller today announced that it has reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to return funds belonging to American players that had been frozen at the DOJ's request .

London's Oxford Street Virgin Megastore will be the only shop in the centre of the capital to offer Sony PlayStation 3s at midnight tomorrow - thanks to the actions of Westminster Council and the Metropolitan Police. The reason? Local government and law enforcement officials fear they won't be able to cope with the crowds.

Six individuals have beendetained in Florida for suspicion of fraud by using credit card information stolen from TJX. It is the first arrests connected with the theft of customer details from the company, which owns retail outlets including TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A J Wright.

A database service call went rather awry when a network specialist accidentally wiped a hard-drive containing Alaska's $38bn Oil Fund. The multi-billion-dollar boner was performed under the watchful eyes of a Dell storage specialist working on a remote desktop session, a report obtained today by The Register has revealed.